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Have you ever wondered if you're an anxious attachment style, what a dismissive avoidant partner or person you're starting to date actually feels about you when you start to date them? And have you ever wondered if you were a dismissive avoidant, how the anxious attachment style experiences dating you on the other side of things? We're going to start by talking about the key themes. What a dismissive avoidant often feels when they meet an anxious attachment style and start dating them, what they like about the anxious attachment style and we'll flip it around. We'll talk about what draws anxious attachment style so deeply to dismissive avoidance and what sort of sparks their curio there in the dating stage. Then we'll move into the second part of this video, sort of a mini masterclass here. All about what starts to go wrong, what the challenges are, what the triggers and wounds are that come up when they start dating each other, what that landscape is like between the two in regards to if a dismissive avoidant wants to make a commitment to an anxious attachment cell, what comes up for them? What do they feel? Are they likely to? What makes them pull back? We'll cover all of this and then we'll get into at the end of this video what each attachment style really needs to work on in their own healing journey to be able to make this relationship work. Because there's ne steps that both need to take to be able to make this connection thrive. And also you'll know what to observe for and look out for in case somebody's not doing that work so you can know when to walk away. And this is a part of a series we'll do for this entire month, so make sure you subscribe and hit the notification bell about each attachment style pairing. We'll talk about how fearful avoidance feel when they date a dismissive and vice versa. We'll talk about fearful avoidance when they're dating an anxious attachment style and vice versa. We'll talk about how each attachment style response is securely attached individuals and what they experience. And we'll do this not just for the dating stage, but we'll do this in the power struggle st. We'll talk about this in the honeymoon stage of the relationship. We'll talk about the needs and wounds and we'll do a huge segment towards the end of this month all about what each attachment style needs to do to heal whilst in a relationship with somebody of an opposing attachment style. And of course, if you're currently single and dating somebody, what you need to be on the lookout for to prepare yourself for a future relationship. If you want to go back into dating. I hope you enjoy this. I hope you enjoy this whole series for this month. I'm really excited to share this with you. So let's dive in foreign. Let's start by talking about when dismissive avoidance and anxious attachment styles first meet each other. What does this actually look like? Number one, they are very attracted to each other. Early on, there is this biological mechanism known as trait variety, which is our very formal version of opposites attract. Okay. It is a known thing that opposites attract. That's sort of the colloquial term you'll hear people use, but it's actually a biological feature. And you can imagine many, many, many years ago if we were out trying to survive in the wild with somebody. Well, if you have one really smart person and they pair up with one really strong person, they have a better chance at surviving together because they each have unique skills and things to bring to the table. And so we were actually wired to be attracted to, to be drawn to people who express different strengths, different traits than we do because we're more likely to survive together. Okay, so we'll often see this as one of the early points of attraction. You'll see that dismissive avoidance are very drawn to find it very attractive, how warm and charismatic and charming and just open and friendly and thoughtful anxious attachment styles are. And they like that in the early stage of dating. Now, of course, later on, they may have some misgivings about it if they start to feel like their autonomy is being infringed upon and things that we'll get into in future videos throughout this month. But you know, what you'll generally see is that dismissive avoidance are very drawn to that warmth of the anxious attachment style. And they often experience the anxious attachment style as being somebody who they sort of wish that they were more like. And a lot of people are very surprised to hear this. It's almost in a fantasy world. But I've heard so many. After being in private practice for over a decade and then running our personal development school programs and publishing content for the last seven, eight years, what I've seen is that a lot of dismissive avoidants will say, yeah, they're so warm, they're so friendly. To be honest, I sometimes wish I was more like that. Okay, so it's not like they're sitting there thinking, I want to just be like them. I want to change myself and become them. But they have this sort of way of putting an anxious attachment style when they first meet them on the pedest. And a lot of dismissive avoidants also say things like, yeah, I really feel comfortable around this person easily. It's not normal for me to always feel like that. I felt like I could kind of be myself around them a little bit earlier on and you know, I like that things just flowed and conversation was easy. And you'll hear a lot of these comments from the dismissive avoidant about the anxious attachment style. If you do want to do a deep dive, we have full courses on each of the relationship dynamics, something I probably don't talk about enough, but we've had for, for years. And you can actually check them out free, fully for free for 14 days. So we're doing a 14 day free trial. It's actually more than enough time to get through a full course. I'll put the link to that down below. You'll be able to check it out for, for free. But on the flip side, we'll also see that anxious attachment cells often report dismissive avoidance as being a bit of a mystery and wanting to win over their approval. They're drawn to their independence, self assuredness, they do their own thing and they march to the beat of their own drum. And they're not really concerned with people's approval and they're drawn to the mystery and the assertiveness of the dismissive avoidant, the individuation of the dismissive avoidant in a lot where dismissive avoidance are so much their own individual person. And so you'll see this opposite detract mode be this first major thing that will draw them together. And it often creates a spark and this chemistry. And to be quite honest, sometimes just this opposites attract mode, the spark, this chemistry can be so strong it can cause the anxious and avoidant to stay in a relationship dynamic that may otherwise be problematic in some sort of cases. If dismissive avoidance and anxious attachment cells don't learn to communicate and don't learn the certain rites of pass to make it out of the dating stage and into the preceding stages of relationship in a healthy way, then what you'll often see is that anxious attachment styles and dismissive avoidance, they have a lot of dysfunction in their communication that may happen later on. A lot of challenges, a lot of misunderstandings between each other. But what's actually happening is that spark keeps drawing them back, that constant like, oh my gosh, we're so different though. And that need because our subconscious mind really seeks out homeostasis, it seeks out equilibrium just like our body does, right we're always trying to return to homeostasis. What's interesting is when you have two people who are so different, we register it often at a subconscious level as these two separate aspects coming together to make a whole. And then we're drawn to go back to these things over and over again that we sense as being a part of our wholeness or equilibrium. And so what you'll see is a spark can be really strong, this chemistry can be really strong. But there are a lot of things that have to be done properly that we're going to get into in a few minutes to actually move through this stage of relationship together in a way that can be healthy. Okay. Now what you'll then see is that dismissive avoidants end up feeling like a lot of their needs are met early on. From a needs perspective. They feel like their sense of warmth and supportiveness and to be cared for and acknowledged. One of the second biggest things that drives attraction is some when somebody meets our deepest unmet needs from childhood, and a lot of times the AP meets the needs for the dismissive avoidant through their warmth and their supportiveness and all these things that dismissive avoidance didn't often get growing up. And so again, this creates this, this strong spark that ensues. And things often start very well in the early stages of dating. Okay, between these two. But our dating stage of relationship is usually zero to six months. And what we'll generally start to see is that of course, dismissive avoidants want to be closer to the latter end of that six month period. So they'll want to take their time to really vet, to really see who this person is and how they'll handle conflict. And, you know, they'll, they'll pump the brakes quite frequently on committing because when things get a little more serious for them, they often feel, you know, vulnerable and they feel afraid of that commitment, anxious attachment cells on the other. They end up being in positions with people where they really struggle a lot of the time to move more slowly. So they're looking for a commitment quite quickly. They're like, I'm interested in you. I feel a spark. There's something that's drawing me in. Okay, let's be in a relationship and let's figure things out. Whereas dismissive avoidants want to know all the things that could go wrong ahead of time and, you know, prepare to see if they could navigate those things before making a commitment. And this is particularly where we see some of the challenges start to ensue in the dating stage. And not every APDA dynamic will make it out of the dating stage stage of relationship. So there are two really big breakdown points for this relationship. The first one is in the dating stage. You'll usually see this around the the 3, 4, 5, 6 month mark when there's this push to move from, from dating stage into the honeymoon stage, which is actually marked by the rite of passage to make a commitment. And so what you'll see is in this particular space we'll see dismissive avoidance start to pump the brakes, right? They get a little bit afraid, they, they get antsy, they get nervous around commitment. We see a much bigger deactivation in the power struggle stage that more significant around the year and a half to two year mark of, of being together. But we'll cover that in future videos in this upcoming week as we go through all the different attachment pairings. And throughout this month we'll talk about the different relationship dynamics that, that often exist. But what you'll see here is that dismissive avoidance when they start connecting with the AP more this is where we start to see things kind of go off the rails. Okay, so we have this strong spark. We have this. They both meet each other's unmet needs from childhood in various ways. There's the AP also having this comfort Z chasing and that feels familiar. And so they'll often invest from that particular dynamic as well. And the AP starts seeking approval from the dismissive avoidant, which feels familiar and comfortable for them because they are very much a people pleaser. But often the dismissive avoidant doesn't recognize that that's happening. So they assume that the AP is just showing up. You know, how they would naturally, they assume that the anxious attachment style is showing up and being themselves and, you know, stating their true needs if they had them because they tend to take conversations and communication really literally. Now here's what happens in this relationship over time. What you'll is when this commitment starts to progress or the relationship starts to progress, dismissive avoidance start to get triggered because one of their core wounds is the fear of being trapped or engulfed. Okay, so they start getting closer to this initial commitment stage. They can feel the AP pushing for a commitment and it triggers this core wound that is subconsciously part of their programming from childhood. And in this, the dismissive avoidance starts going, wait, what do I know about commitment and vulnerability? What do I know about, you know, this, these past experiences? And if you understand a little bit about the subconscious and how this works, what you'll see is that our subconscious mind is a warehouse it stores everything. It stores all information. And yes, it consolidates memories a little bit over time, but you'll see that we store these experiences and we reproject them. So whatever we have an experience of in real life in front of us, you can imagine your conscious mind basically communicates to your subconscious mind and says, what do we know about somebody wanting us to be more vulnerable and to be more, you know, open and committed? Where did we feel deeply vulnerable and connected in relationships before and what was that like? And you can imagine, in a sense, that the conscious mind goes to the subconscious mind and the subconscious mind floods forward all of these past experiences and stored feelings and emotions saying, yeah, well, when you felt really vulnerable in childhood and you felt, you know, this, this deep sense of being in that dynamic and sort of trapped in this household where you couldn't get your needs met, it didn't feel good. And so these, these fears start coming up. And at the same time, these big core wounds that we know the anxious attachment style has the core wound of abandonment, feeling not good enough, fearing being unloved or rejected or disliked, all of these things start to float to the surface for the ap. And at this stage of dating, either these two individuals will make it through this stage and learn to navigate their problems a little bit more effectively through open communication, through talking about their inner fears and their inner wounds, through these rites of passage from an integrated attachment theory perspective that actually allow us to navigate relationships effectively. Or they won't. And if they don't, then what they'll end up doing is maybe even committing to the honeymoon stage of a relationship, but just experiencing a lot of friction early on, not really feeling like they can find their footing. And by the time they reach the power struggle stage, which is statistically where most people break up and very much the next stage that people will break up in is usually dating and power struggle are the two big ones. Then what we'll see is that the anxious attachments on dismissive, avoidant, they argue a lot. Even if it's not these huge, volatile arguments. It's a lot of low level, you know, criticism, bickering, you know, resistance, resentment, frustration, a lot of these types of problems and themes because they're both triggering each other's wounds all the way back from childhood. The dismissive, avoidance, big core wounds of being trapped, engulfed, feeling shamed or defective if they're criticized, feeling like they're not good enough or capable of navigating relationships, and feeling the sense of, like, well, why bother? You know, I'm, I'M getting all this pressure. I don't know if this is right for me. And the anxious attachment style going, I'm trying so hard. I'm putting my whole heart and soul into this relationship. And I'm always trying to move the needle and what's going on? Like, why can't you give me more of yourself? What's taking place? And they really hit that initial triggering point about three, four months in when the dismissive avoidance starts to sense that things are getting more serious and they feel more vulnerable. And this is where they start to retreat. Now, from a neuroscience point of view, something really interesting that often happens in this particular stage of relationship is there was this study done back in 2008, and they had anxiously attached individuals and dismissive avoidants play this feedback game. And they went into the scanner while viewing faces that either approved or disapproved of their performance while playing this feedback game. And anxious attachment style individuals in this study, they actually had stronger amygdala responses to negative social feedback, which really indicates this heightened threat sensitivity and dismiss of avoidance. Actually had reduced response responses to positive feedback, which I just find to be so interesting. What this does is it explains why reassurance often doesn't land for a lot of dismissive avoidance. Well, negative feedback feels really amplified for anxious attachment styles. And what we know so much from an integrated attachment theory point of view is how much anxious attachment style individuals, they don't just, you know, have this sensitivity to rejection, but they also need a lot of reassurance. It's a huge relationship need for them. And of course, because dismissive avoidants don't often feel that same way, although they do appreciate acknowledgment and appreciation as big needs. But that won't be until a little bit later on. In relationships, they don't recognize that their partner needs that or the person they're dating needs that. And so they often pull away and they often are not giving these things, causing anxious attachment styles to feel like they're spiraling even more and struggling even more as a result of it. And so the dating stage for this, this couple or potential couple is often something where there's a lot of spark, a lot of chemistry, a lot of myst and interest and curiosity between the two. And that chemistry can be something that really drives, from that trait, variety, perspective, a lot of deep needs to keep spending time together and showing up and making an effort. But they also trigger a lot of each other's core wounds. You know, the anxious attachment cells core wounds would be not Good enough and abandoned. Alone, disliked, rejected, unloved. Like these big core wounds that we talk so much about from an integrated attachment theory viewpoint, whilst the dismissive avoidance core wounds are around. I feel like there's criticism, and I feel defective or shamed when I'm criticized. I feel not good enough and not capable of really doing this relationship in a better way. And also this very strong sense for dismissive avoidance of experiencing a lot of being trapped, a lot of being engulfed, a lot of feeling helpless within that, or powerless. And so they'll often start to constantly deactivate in order to, you know, navigate this. This dynamic a lot more effectively. They're like, okay, let me take space, and then I can feel safe, and then I can kind of come back and return when I'm ready. But it's the very thing that triggers the anxious attachment style the most. What I want to show you here is how this. This partnership then enters into what I call a trigger cycle. Okay, so this is something that I created from working with many, many, many clients over the past 14 years and have seen tens of thousands of people at this point through our program. What you see is what I call the APDA trigger cycle. And every relationship has these trigger patterns. But it's very interesting. It's that each person's core wound just so happens their behavior in terms of how they respond to it, just so happens to retrigger the other person's core wound. So you can imagine as an example here that we have an anxious attachment cell and they have this fear of abandonment, right? Their biggest core wound and dismissive avoidance of a huge core wound around being trapped. And when the anxious attachment style in the relationship starts to feel the dismissive avoidant, naturally pulling back a little bit or not investing much, of course, that triggers their abandonment wound and how they behave. So I want you to think of a member from PDS coined this. So shout out to Casey, who gave us a great little acronym for this Wound behavior. Wound behavior. So I want you to imagine the abandonment trigger is there, but how they behave is they then want to cling when they feel abandoned. Anxious attachment cells want to maintain proximity, so they cling. They hold on more tight, and in turn, the dismissive void and feels wild, but they feel more trapped, right? Which is a big trigger and core wound for them. And when they then feel trapped, what do they do? They need to take space, they need to push away. And when they push away, it retriggers the anxious attachment styles. Abandonment, core wound. And so you'll literally See this move in a cycle and this is the very cycle that can burn out and burn up this relationship and prevent it from ever progressing into the dating stage, which is part of why it's so important to be able to be mindful of this. Now some of the big themes here and we, we will get into this a lot over the next few videos that we do about this. So make sure you hit the subscribe and notification bell. But a lot of the big themes here are about how do we navigate this. Well, communication and we can actually communicate through these trigger cycles. I'll have a video coming out in detail about how to do that because it's a very these very small fixes that go such a long way. On top of that, you'll see that we don't just have the ability to communicate through these things, but each attachment allows to rewire these triggers from a neuroplasticity point of view and do somatic healing work to be able to fully feel their emotions, be able to actually not get so bought into this emotional state, and be able to regulate their nervous system through this experience. So you'll learn a lot about that throughout this month and then each attachment style as well. And this is all the integrated attachment theory, six pillars of healing. We'll dive into all six of them throughout the month. But not just communicate, not just somatically experience and process your emotions, but actually also be able to learn what you need and find healthy ways of meeting your own needs so that you can learn to self soothe. And each attachment style actually has to do this very effectively. A lot of dismissive avoidance, they're numbing, not soothing. And we'll get into that throughout this month. But a lot of anxious attachment styles they are attempting to soothe, but they do it almost exclusively through other people. And that actually makes it very limiting in terms of their ability to self regulate. And that's where they end up, you know, clinging too much and accidentally pushing other people away. So we have so much to cover this month. Thank you so much for stopping by. I hope you subscribe, hit the notification bell and I will see you in the next video.